


11 Untranslatable Words from Other Cultures (Version A or Why I Can’t have Nice Things)

by Bluethursday



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Allusions to non-con or at least dub-con, Dark, Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Nothing is explicit everything is alluded to, Older Woman/Younger Man, Underage Sex, i wrote around the bush, red riding hood themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 08:28:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19808518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluethursday/pseuds/Bluethursday
Summary: A series of loosely connected Bruce/Tim drabbles based on a set of untranslatable words. Consider a lumberjack, a boy, and a forest. Red riding hood themes are abundant. Bruce has forgotten some things...Tim has not.





	11 Untranslatable Words from Other Cultures (Version A or Why I Can’t have Nice Things)

1.)Waldeinsamkett (German)

The feeling of being alone in the woods.

He does not turn his neck to look behind him. He does not stop moving forward down the path through the grounds. Off to grandmothers house we go, if grandmother were a two hundred pound man in a bat suit and the house, a cave.

Tim does not know the names of his grandparents and if asked he would make them up to avoid suspicion because he always had the suspicion that his mother didn’t like her parents. Or Jack’s. Or him, but that just never came up in conversation.

Tim sometimes has the suspicion that Bruce does not want him in his house or his woods, but he is Red Riding Hood and Bruce, the Woodsman’s axe, so their story goes a little something like:

A boy too young to know trouble when it creeps in beside him with lips red as a winter cloak finds a man in the deep, dark woods. He follows the man home because he is injured and the boy, with a heart like a bird, wants to help. He does not leave the man’s house for seven years.

It goes a little something like:

A boy falls on an axe in the dead of winter and dies, red staining white like a virgin on her wedding night. The locals say the boy is to blame, they say he shouldn’t have been playing in the snow alongside objects as sharp as axes. They do not mention the woodsman or the rust on the blade or the way the boy struggled to breathe for hours before the axe was pulled out, his lungs finally collapsing.

For all of the shadows and shadowy spectators he may as well have been alone. Bruce’s eyes the axe, and Gotham the cold.

They do not say his heart was missing. They do speak of his missing spleen. With all that mess it was amazing that they identified his body in the first place. With all that mess it was amazing that Tim knew himself in the end, that seeing his reflection in Bruce’s eyes, he recognized his own image.

Tim does not have a picnic basket, and the big bad wolf is nowhere to be found but he does not turn to make sure, to confirm his safety, as he makes his way back to the home he’s known for seven years.

This is not a measure of trust, this is a manifestation of absolute denial. He is waiting for his fall, for the call, for a horn to sound, for the wolves to come, for a signal to tell him where the axe is so when he lays down he knows exactly where to make his bed.

It is not the wolves that he’s afraid of but the bats and the biggest of them all is lurking behind him as he slinks towards Wayne Manor, a thief in the night. A boy in a red cloak walking over grass.

He does not acknowledge the shadow behind him because for all of Bruce’s size, Tim may as well have been alone.

2.)Cualacina (Italian)

The mark left on a table left by a cold glass.

Bruce sees the imprints whether he wants to or not; they are solid and muddy, reeking with a scent only he can make out. It smells something like disappointment and broken promises. They are remnants of a time he cannot remember but tries to reconstruct like a detective dusting a crime scene for fingerprints.

He does not remember enough of Tim’s early training, and whether that was the drinks he can’t remember having or the endless agony of loss; all he knows of Tim’s former years were condensed into hazy days of long patrol hours and numbness.

He does not know the conversations they had or if they spoke to each other at all, but sometimes, while looking through his files, he notices a line of code old enough to date Tim, and tries to remember if he let him have access to the mainframe at the tender age of eleven.

He saw marks in the way Tim looked at him, always from the side, never meeting his eyes directly. The way he spoke in lines instead of speech and seemed to be preforming the same routine in repeat but Bruce does not know what his lines were and Tim will not tell him.

He dusts over desks and searches under Tim’s bed for signs of life or a hint to the game only one of them seems to remember starting but all he is left with is minute traces of dust and an ache in his bones that does not came from searching under beds.

He thinks that he’s not looking hard enough because sometimes Tim looks at him and all Bruce can see is an axe through his chest and the reflection of his own mistakes. He remembers flashes of blood and sacrifice and he pushes no further.

Tim looks at him as though it is his last second alive, his head on a chopping block and Bruce, the man holding the axe.

He does not want to know why. He keeps searching anyway.

3.)Iktsuarpok (Inuit)

The feeling of anticipation that leads you to keep looking outside to see if anyone is coming.

Periodically, Tim checks on his family, his eyes flicking up to meet Bruce’s briefly to search for understanding, for horror, for hidden secrets escaping from lock an key. He has made peace with the things he buried. The secrets he packaged in black and red spandex and then sent to live conveniently in an abandoned theatre away from Bruce.

Some days last too long and some secrets crawl inside of him like worms, or rot. He does not want Bruce to know but there is violence in him and he has been choking on his own vomit for years. There is no beauty to this, no righteous cause but Tim knows too much about choking back to speak. His peace is riddled with pain.

His skin itches with anticipation but he is willing to wait. Torn between wanting Bruce to know and wanting to run away Tim sits on the edge on a razor, waiting for a flicker of recognition and when his tongue works its way out the throat it is strangling, he is not certain of his ability to hold it back.

Every phone call and meeting is a landmine. Patrol is a walk through a sectioned off area of the desert, blindfolded, and naked.

He can taste the resolution coming, so he comes over to watch the bread rise. He leaves the house to wait for his guests and he sharpens his claws for when his mouth won’t be enough to save him from Bruce’s gaze.

Seven years is a long, long time to wait.

4.)Komorebi (Japanese)

Sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees.

Tim dreams of beds and hands. He dreams of hard cologne and a man calling out “Jason”. He opens his eyes, his body unshaken and unmoved. All of his nightmares do not affect his sleeping habits. He has been careful to remove such a vulnerability.

There is light coming through the curtains as Tim rolls over on his stomach and takes it. As he lets the light wash over his shoulders and back.

There is no light in the forests he’s known. In the houses he’s known. In the men he’s known.

It feels like being washed clean and he’s taken too many baths to take that feeling for granted. This is what salvation feels like. This is what baptism feels like and Tim has never been a religious man but he’ll pray in his death bed just like anyone else. Just in case.

He thinks that he’ll sleep in today. Just in case.

5.)Pochemuchka (Russian)

A person who asks a lot of questions.

Curiosity is perhaps Bruce’s defining trait. It is the reason that his abilities are honed. It is the reason the crime rates in Gotham lowered the moment he took to the streets, it is also a habit.

There is compulsion to Bruce’s madness and Tim is a box of unanswered questions that Bruce is unable to open because he does not have the key. He does not have the box, in fact all he has amounts to a match in a gun fight, or a glass of water to a forest fire.

If he could ask he would not know the right questions but for a unknown reason his mind jumps to “Where did he touch you?”

As far as he knows no one has ever touched Tim sexually, but his mind wants to know, “How old were you?” and his heart is determined to silence his mind by tightening until his mind is forced to silence itself lest it risk murder suicide.

He has always known his heart to be a bomb, waiting to take everything down with it. It has been breaking Bruce for years. regardless of the opinions held by his mind. It will not stop now, nor relent when Bruce is on his knees.

In moments of pain it has been knows to beat louder, palpitate harder, until Bruce swore it would break his ribcage and exit onto the church floor he vaguely remembers collapsing on as he prayed for Jason on a night were the moon was full.

There is a shadow at the door, waiting for him, guarding him, and he wants to ask it, “Show me on the doll where the bad man touched you.”

6.)Sobremesa (Spanish)

The time spent after lunch or dinner, talking to the people you shared the meal with.

Tim and Bruce don’t share meals. Their communication limited to brief nods and sign language. Bruce wants to know what Tim looks like when he’s eating. He has never seen Tim eat.

He wants to know if he would scarf it down like couldn’t get enough, like if he sucked the juices out long enough, hard enough, the flavour would be better.

He wants to know if Tim would nip at his fruit like a kitten, strawberry’s splitting into pieces under delicate nibbles barely hard enough to break skin or if he’d bite fruit in half, hands clinging to the sticky juices, his fingers in his mouth.

He wonders if Tim would snap, if he would lick, if he would eat foods with his fingers of meticulously insist on the proper utensils, his grasp, even and professional as he manoeuvred the silverware.

Tim’s mouth is too red and to have eaten fruit and water alone.

7.)Jayus (Indonesian)

A joke told so poorly and so unfunny that one can’t help but laugh.

This is how Bruce remembers, how he opens the box and unwraps the package. This is how his heart rips out his chest.

Tim bends over the Red Bird and asks, “Do you want me to move?”

Tim straddles Bruce’s lap and asks, “Do you want me to move?”

Bruce’s hands are over Tim’s hips and his lips barely graze Tim throat. Bruce is thirsty and Tim is…small… but he is water or at the very least he can be easily mistaken as such and when Bruce’s mouth descends it sucks red onto pale lips. Bruce swears they’ve been red since but he can just remember a forest and he swears they were red then too.

Tim whimpers and clutches at Bruce’s chest and his shoulder blade fits in the palm of Bruce’s hand and Bruce moves.

Tim screams and Bruce back-pedals away from the Tim who is still small, curled over the Red Bird and nearly trips over his own feet as he runs away and when Tim turns back to watch him, he does not speak. Yet

8.)Pana Po’o (Hawaiian)

The act of scratching your head in order to help you remember something you have forgotten.

He makes it to the toilet just in time to lose everything he’s eaten in what feels like a week. He is sure it is less than that but when he is sure that there is no more, another wave comes. When he can purge no more his stomach roils with impotent nausea. All of the effect and none of the mess. He is seasick on solid ground although that same ground does not feel quite as solid anymore.

He knows that even then, even with Tim pressed up against him so close their hearts could rage against each other, that he had never looked Tim in the eyes for more than seconds at a time. His heart reminds him why and it tightens into a vice.

He never thought he was that kind of man, but he thinks he called out for “Jason” and Tim did not reply. He rubs his head back and forth against the bathroom tile trying to think of the things Tim must have said but all he hears is “Do you want me to move?” and “Yes.”

He dry heaves. Hard.

He wants to know how long or when but Tim is a blur in his mind, one image converging into another and he can not differentiate between age or place but there is so much grey that he can safety say that they were in Gotham. There is so much grey he can safely say a back alley in Gotham. There is so much grey he can safely assume a rooftop in Gotham, or a bathroom stall because the city was grey from it’s foundations up.

He does not need to know how Tim would eat his food because he knows without any question what Tim can do with his mouth.

He does not need to hear Tim speak because he knows what Tim can do.

“Where did he touch you?”

Bruce always wanted Jason, he just wants to know whose name Tim was thinking of in bed, because he knows that he never called out Bruce’s.

9.)Depaysement

The feeling that comes from not being in one’s home country.

Tim wipes his face to get rid of engine grease as he walks towards he bathroom. He is a guest in this house but he’s paid in too much flesh to melt into the background. His steps are sure.

He has not expecting the strange disconnect from the world around him, the view of the manor like scenes in a fun house mirror all distorted and stretched apart.

He feels as though he is in a fishbowl looking out when the water is murky. His body is moving but not his mind.

He turns the handle and walks through the door, Bruce leaning against the bathtub, a large spider caught in the drain.

“Do you want me to move?” He asks Bruce only to watch the man physically filch and recoil. Tim watched calmly, before continuing, “I’m not even here most of the time, so this really shouldn’t be a problem.”

Bruce is not sure he can breathe properly, he opens his mouth and no sound comes out. Tim notices and kindly tells Bruce, “Oh, I see. You’re choking a bit, lay back down and breathe in deeply. It never lasts too long.”

The detached authority with which Tim speaks sends another wave of nausea through Bruce as he lays dazed against the bathtub, unmoving but his eyes meet Tim’s for the first time. He swears there is nothing in there at all. It is endless winter in Tim’s eyes and if they were truly the windows to his soul than all Bruce can see is a frozen wasteland.

He wonders if he caused it.

“I,” He chokes, “Forgive me.”

Tim looks down and smiles, his tongue slipping out to wet his lips before he walks away.

10.)Goya (Urdu)

The transporting suspension of disbelief that can occur in good storytelling.

Once upon a time there was a boy who lived with his mother and father. The boy’s mother made him a cape and when she asked what colour the boy wanted it dyed, he begged her for red. The mother toiled over the cape before presenting it to her child who wept with joy and when the boy left to take a basket of food to his grandmother, his mother warned him to stay on the road.

While travelling he came upon a wolf, who told him that there were beautiful wildflowers near the road and that his grandmother would like it if he brought her some, so the boy followed the wolf down farther and farther into the woods but the wolf disappeared leaving the boy lost and alone in the woods.

When the boy found a man injured by a tree he was grateful to find someone who could help him get home so when the woodsman asked for his help getting home the boy agreed. The woodsman lead the boy deeper into the woods, until no sunlight came through the trees nor any sound and brought him to a house in the desolate silence.

When he invited the boy in, the boy accepted the invitation and when the door was locked behind him the boy did not panic. Yet. He did not ask why the man had clothing for him to change into that was slightly bigger than him, or why it looked like it belonged to another boy. He did not ask why the woodsman called him “Jason.”

11.)Mangata (Swedish)

The road like reflection of the moon on the water.

He does not know how they got here, staring each other down over the dinner table, Tim as far away from Bruce as possible, Dick to the right, Damian to his right, Jason on the left and Bruce at head of the table.

“What’s with you and pretender?"Jason asks as they delicately avoided each other,"I meant, I know both of you are awkward as fuck but this is downright hateful. I think you nearly fell into the salad with the way you moved when pretender grabbed the bread.”

Tim side eyed Jason before throwing a role of that same bread at his eyes. Jason caught it without looking and Tim said, “Mind your manners Jason. That’s not exactly dinner conversation.”

Jason looked between the two, noticing the tension in Bruce’s shoulders and the weird blankness coming from Tim. “You two need to sort your shit out.”

Tim chooses not to respond. He picks at his food but grabs a strawberry from a slice of cake leaving the cake intact for a hungrier individual. He swallows the fruit whole.

Note: This is the post from which the words came from - https://merlin-emrys.tumblr.com/post/60018529170


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